The Leopard

by

Giuseppe Di Lampedusa

Don Calogero Sedàra Character Analysis

Don Calogero is mayor of Donnafugata and a newly rich landowner. He is Donna Bastiana’s husband and Angelica’s father. Because of his involvement in the liberal cause, he is also a rising political figure. During the Salina family’s 1860 visit to Donnafugata, Don Calogero surprises the Prince by appearing in fancy (albeit ill-fitting and awkward-looking) evening wear. Despite Don Calogero’s rough manners, cynicism, and naked ambition, the Prince negotiates the marriage of his nephew Tancredi with Angelica, believing the Salinas’ best hope lies in such an alliance. According to Tumeo, Calogero tampered with the people’s votes during the Plebiscite. Don Calogero becomes politically prominent after the Prince recommends him for a Senate seat, knowing that Calogero is more practical and in touch with the times than the Prince can ever be.

Don Calogero Sedàra Quotes in The Leopard

The The Leopard quotes below are all either spoken by Don Calogero Sedàra or refer to Don Calogero Sedàra . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Cultural Survival and Decline Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2. Donnafugata Quotes

At the bottom of the steps the authorities took their leave, and the Princess […] invited the Mayor, the Archpriest, and the notary to dine that same evening. […] And [the Prince] added, turning to the others, “And after dinner, at nine o’clock, we shall be happy to see all our friends.” For a long time Donnafugata commented on these last words. And the Prince, who had found Donnafugata unchanged, was found very much changed himself, for never before would he have issued so cordial an invitation; and from that moment, invisibly, began the decline of his prestige.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra (speaker), Don Calogero Sedàra , Princess Maria Stella, Giuseppe Garibaldi
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:

No laugh […] came from the Prince, on whom, one might almost say, this news had more effect than the bulletin about the landing at Marsala. That had been an event not only foreseen but also distant and invisible. Now, with his sensibility to presages and symbols, he saw revolution in that white tie and two black tails moving at this moment up the stairs of his own home. Not only was he, the Prince, no longer the major landowner in Donnafugata, but he now found himself forced to receive, when in afternoon dress himself, a guest appearing in evening clothes.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Don Calogero Sedàra , Giuseppe Garibaldi
Page Number: 76
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3. The Troubles of Don Fabrizio Quotes

Don Calogero’s heraldic impromptu gave the Prince the incomparable artistic satisfaction of seeing a type realized in all its details […] [Don Calogero] was accompanied through two of the drawing rooms, embraced again, and began descending the stairs as the Prince, towering above him, watched this little conglomeration of astuteness, ill-cut clothes, money, and ignorance who was now to become almost a part of the family getting smaller and smaller.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Don Calogero Sedàra
Page Number: 131
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4. Love at Donnafugata Quotes

Gradually Don Calogero came to understand that a meal in common need not necessarily be all munching and grease stains; that a conversation may well bear no resemblance to a dog fight […] that sometimes more can be obtained by saying “I haven’t explained myself well” than “I can’t understand a word”; and that the adoption of such tactics can result in a greatly increased yield[.]

It would be rash to affirm that Don Calogero drew an immediate profit from what he had learned; he did try to shave a little better and complain a little less about the waste of laundry soap; but from that moment there began, for him and his family, that process of continual refining which in the course of three generations transforms innocent peasants into defenseless gentry.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Tancredi Falconeri, Don Calogero Sedàra , Angelica Sedàra
Page Number: 137
Explanation and Analysis:

Anyone deducing from this attitude of Angelica that she loved Tancredi would have been mistaken; she had too much pride and too much ambition to be capable of that annihilation, however temporary, of one’s own personality without which there is no love; […] but although she did not love him, she was, then, in love with him, a very different thing; his blue eyes, his affectionate teasing, certain suddenly serious tones of his voice gave her, even in memory, quite a definite turn, and in those days her one longing was to be gripped by those hands of his; presently she would forget them and find a substitute as she did, in fact, later, but for the moment she yearned for him to seize her.

Related Characters: Tancredi Falconeri, Don Calogero Sedàra , Angelica Sedàra
Page Number: 141
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5. Father Pirrone Pays a Visit Quotes

Two days later Father Pirrone left to return to Palermo. As he was jolted along he went over impressions that were not entirely pleasant; that brutish love affair come to fruition in St. Martin’s summer, that wretched half almond grove reacquired by means of calculated courtship, seemed to him the rustic poverty-stricken equivalent of other events recently witnessed. Nobles were reserved and incomprehensible, peasants explicit and clear; but the Devil twisted them both around his little finger all the same.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Tancredi Falconeri, Father Pirrone, Don Calogero Sedàra , Angelica Sedàra, ‘Ncilina, Santino Pirrone, Turi Pirrone
Page Number: 209
Explanation and Analysis:
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Don Calogero Sedàra Quotes in The Leopard

The The Leopard quotes below are all either spoken by Don Calogero Sedàra or refer to Don Calogero Sedàra . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Cultural Survival and Decline Theme Icon
).
Chapter 2. Donnafugata Quotes

At the bottom of the steps the authorities took their leave, and the Princess […] invited the Mayor, the Archpriest, and the notary to dine that same evening. […] And [the Prince] added, turning to the others, “And after dinner, at nine o’clock, we shall be happy to see all our friends.” For a long time Donnafugata commented on these last words. And the Prince, who had found Donnafugata unchanged, was found very much changed himself, for never before would he have issued so cordial an invitation; and from that moment, invisibly, began the decline of his prestige.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra (speaker), Don Calogero Sedàra , Princess Maria Stella, Giuseppe Garibaldi
Page Number: 62
Explanation and Analysis:

No laugh […] came from the Prince, on whom, one might almost say, this news had more effect than the bulletin about the landing at Marsala. That had been an event not only foreseen but also distant and invisible. Now, with his sensibility to presages and symbols, he saw revolution in that white tie and two black tails moving at this moment up the stairs of his own home. Not only was he, the Prince, no longer the major landowner in Donnafugata, but he now found himself forced to receive, when in afternoon dress himself, a guest appearing in evening clothes.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Don Calogero Sedàra , Giuseppe Garibaldi
Page Number: 76
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3. The Troubles of Don Fabrizio Quotes

Don Calogero’s heraldic impromptu gave the Prince the incomparable artistic satisfaction of seeing a type realized in all its details […] [Don Calogero] was accompanied through two of the drawing rooms, embraced again, and began descending the stairs as the Prince, towering above him, watched this little conglomeration of astuteness, ill-cut clothes, money, and ignorance who was now to become almost a part of the family getting smaller and smaller.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Don Calogero Sedàra
Page Number: 131
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4. Love at Donnafugata Quotes

Gradually Don Calogero came to understand that a meal in common need not necessarily be all munching and grease stains; that a conversation may well bear no resemblance to a dog fight […] that sometimes more can be obtained by saying “I haven’t explained myself well” than “I can’t understand a word”; and that the adoption of such tactics can result in a greatly increased yield[.]

It would be rash to affirm that Don Calogero drew an immediate profit from what he had learned; he did try to shave a little better and complain a little less about the waste of laundry soap; but from that moment there began, for him and his family, that process of continual refining which in the course of three generations transforms innocent peasants into defenseless gentry.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Tancredi Falconeri, Don Calogero Sedàra , Angelica Sedàra
Page Number: 137
Explanation and Analysis:

Anyone deducing from this attitude of Angelica that she loved Tancredi would have been mistaken; she had too much pride and too much ambition to be capable of that annihilation, however temporary, of one’s own personality without which there is no love; […] but although she did not love him, she was, then, in love with him, a very different thing; his blue eyes, his affectionate teasing, certain suddenly serious tones of his voice gave her, even in memory, quite a definite turn, and in those days her one longing was to be gripped by those hands of his; presently she would forget them and find a substitute as she did, in fact, later, but for the moment she yearned for him to seize her.

Related Characters: Tancredi Falconeri, Don Calogero Sedàra , Angelica Sedàra
Page Number: 141
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5. Father Pirrone Pays a Visit Quotes

Two days later Father Pirrone left to return to Palermo. As he was jolted along he went over impressions that were not entirely pleasant; that brutish love affair come to fruition in St. Martin’s summer, that wretched half almond grove reacquired by means of calculated courtship, seemed to him the rustic poverty-stricken equivalent of other events recently witnessed. Nobles were reserved and incomprehensible, peasants explicit and clear; but the Devil twisted them both around his little finger all the same.

Related Characters: Prince Don Fabrizio Corbèra , Tancredi Falconeri, Father Pirrone, Don Calogero Sedàra , Angelica Sedàra, ‘Ncilina, Santino Pirrone, Turi Pirrone
Page Number: 209
Explanation and Analysis: